Give Us This Day (71 page)

“When was that?”

“Under half-an-hour ago… Dad’s scared, Gran… She wasn’t wearing her dressing gown and she usually does, or so he says, when she’s on the prowl. She’ll be chilled through by the time we find her, and God knows who might run across her meantime. I thought I’d make sure she wasn’t here before I got everyone out looking and talking about it.”

He sat down and gave her a despairing look, the kind of look his father had given her all those years ago when he came scratching on the door on an even gustier morning with news that Stella had run away from her husband and was being dried, fed, and cared for over at Dewponds.

“Was it that silly notion of fire again, Robert?” He nodded, adding, more to himself than to her, “It can’t go on… Father’s fair done up after weeks of it, and damn it, I’m not much better, as you can see, what with everything to see to. But he won’t hear of… of sending her away anywhere. The doctor says it’ll pass, given time, but I keep remembering that place Uncle Giles thinks she should go.”

“What place is that?”

“A kind of special hospital. At Broadstairs, I think. A swanky place, that charges a lot. But like Uncle Giles says, what does the money matter? We can’t watch her twenty-four hours a day. Not Father, not me, nor Dolly either with her expecting any minute.”

She wanted very much to comfort him. She wanted most desperately to give him aid and advice, to command the situation in the way she had when his father made an almost identical appeal to her years before he was born. But she had lost the knack of command somehow and neither words nor plan suggested themselves. She could only sit there chafing her hands, reflecting that, on Robert’s testimony alone, it would soon be post-office gossip in the village and every farm kitchen for miles around, that Stella Fawcett had lost her wits and taken to wandering the country-side in her nightdress, and that there was talk of “putting her away somewhere.”

She said, finally, “How long, Robert…? I mean… when did it begin? Seriously, I mean?”

He replied, glumly, “Ever since she heard. Ever since they told her about Marty and she took that shot at Uncle George.”

A wide variety of rumours had reached her via local gossip, but the most alarming of them had not included this.

”
Shot
at him? Stella shot at
George
?”

He looked badly bothered for a moment, but then he shrugged. “We all decided not to tell you, but I can’t see as it matters now. You would have found out sooner or later.”

“Tell me. Tell me exactly what happened.”

He told her and when he had done she bowed her head. She felt so weak and sick that she could hardly answer him when he said, rising, “Look, I’d best get back. Maybe you could send the groom and gardeners over to help look.”

She managed to say, in a whisper, “No, don’t go! Not until your grandfather hears… he’ll decide who is to know and who isn’t… I can’t, I can’t even think straight just now.” She dragged herself out of the kitchen and up the stairs, wondering if she had the resolution to rouse Adam and tell him that his daughter had lost her wits and was a danger to herself and everyone about her.

Standing there, her hand on the door latch, she thought,
The last time this happened he was away. I had to cope with it quite alone and I did, very successfully. Where on earth has all my courage gone? She went in to find him
in the act of strapping on his leg.

“Get dressed,” he said, shortly. “Get something on and leave this to me.”

“You heard?”

“Enough.”

“Robert wants some of the servants to go over and help search.”

“Robert can want. I’ll deal with it.”

“But Adam, it’s terrible… terrible…”

“It could be worse.”

“Shall I get Phoebe to tell Chivers to harness the trap?”

“No trap. I’ll ride over.”

She thought,
I envied him repose an hour ago… now it’s his coolness and courage… At eighty-four he’s still got more than any man alive!
She dragged herself across to the dressing-table and sat staring at the forlorn reflection in the mirror.

As he was struggling with his riding boots she said, “What can you do anyway, at your age?”

“Whatever has to be done, Hetty.”

* * *

There was still no trace of her when he rode into the farmyard. Denzil was there, looking like a man dragged from a deep sleep. He stood rubbing his eyes as Adam said, stormily, “Why in God’s name didn’t you or George tell me about that shooting incident? Hadn’t I the right to know?”

“George wanted to keep it from you. It didn’t seem all that terrible at the time, just a flare up of… well… temper, and a spite against George. She never wanted the boys to leave the farm and work on those motors, and she was right, I reckon. But I sided with George. It seemed the best thing for them at the time.”

“Never mind that, tell me exactly what happened last night.”

“Nothing particular. She was restless, same as usual, and I must have dropped off, I was that worn out. I woke up about five and found her gone. I went down and looked around, but when she wasn’t in the house… When I realised she was in her nightdress and nothing else, I roused Robert and Dolly. Robert got the two hands to search the farm buildings, but there was no sign of her, apart from that one footmark.”

“What footmark?”

“The one in the cow pat down by the bridge. It don’t mean she crossed the bridge, does it? I mean, she might ha’ turned aside and gone along the tow path. Charlie and William are looking there now.”

He said, dismounting, “See to the horse. I’ll take a look myself.”

He went behind the barns and across the short stretch of pasture to the footbridge. The wind had dropped and the sky was overcast, promising a spatter of rain. At the approach of the bridge only a few yards on the farm side of the first plank, he found the tell-tale cow pat. It carried the clear imprint of a naked foot, but he could find no subsequent footprints in the hard-packed slope leading down to the river. The water was fairly high, running three feet or so below the level of the bridge. During several wet springs in the past he had known the bridge covered and old Fawcett, Denzil’s father, had often had trouble with flooding about here. He went back up the bank to the bridge and began to cross it, testing the handrail on either side as he went. The middle section was looser than the approach sections, a single two-by-four batten, nailed to stout posts sunk into the river bed. He leaned hard against it, and felt it give a little, then harder still, steadying himself by the upright until the rusty nails yielded and the rail nearest the farm sprang loose, one end of the section holding it in place but leaving a gap over the deepest section of the river. He went on over to a downsloping field where there was a couple of hen-houses, abandoned now for Robert had moved the nest boxes nearer the farm. There was a lot of litter about here, broken planks, a sheet or two of corrugated iron, and a pile of mouldering straw raked together as though for a bonfire. He stood there looking down at it for several minutes, his heavy brows drawn together in thought. Then, with a glance over his shoulder, he took out some matches, stooped, and set the straw alight. It blazed up for a moment before subsiding into a spiral of yellow, pungent smoke. He went back across the bridge and met Charlie and William, the two farmhands, returning from their unavailing search of the tow path.

“A section of that handrail is loose. Take a look at it. I’ll tell Mr. Fawcett myself.”

The men looked startled but Charlie moved swiftly to the bridge, and he saw him jigging the loose section. William said, “There’s smoke over there, zir… there by the old hen-houses.” And Adam said, “I know, but I’ve looked there. Who made a bonfire there yesterday?”

“Nobody so far as I know, sir. Master Robert was pulling down the shed but didn’t get to finishing the job. You can ask him yourself, sir.”

“I will. Take Charlie and try the southern reach as far as the stone bridge where the road passes over.”

“Yes, Mr. Swann.”

He went back to the yard where Robert was standing talking to his father. “I’ve sent the two hands downstream as far as the road bridge. I’m going back now and I’ll get my own men to search downstream towards the islet beyond Tryst.” Then, looking hard at them, “If she’s found, leave Dolly with her and come straight over. Come in any case if she isn’t found before noon.”

He led his horse over to the mounting block and heaved himself into the saddle. They watched him ride away at a slow trot and Denzil said, in a low voice, “I know what he’s thinking. He’s sure she’s in the river, but I’m not letting myself think that. Not yet, any road.”

* * *

They found her close to the spot he had anticipated, where the river made an ox-bow opposite the little islet that Henrietta always referred to as Shallott. The stream here was shallow, running over what had been a ford and still was in summer. Roots and branches, washing downstream, had piled up to form a dam and she was lying near the far bank in about two feet of water, half-concealed by a curtain of trailing briars.

Boxall, the groom, brought her ashore and laid her under the screen of willows that lined the bank. Her passage down the river had not disfigured her in any way. In her sodden nightgown, and with her tawny hair streaming loose, she looked like one of those women in a pre-Raphaelite painting. Expressionless and make-believe, as though she had never been anything more than a painter’s model. Looking down at her, after they had freed her hair of twigs and bracken fronds, there came to him, with the poignant sadness of a blackbird’s song in mid-winter, the memory of a little girl toddling beside him to the summit of the wooded spur behind the house forty-odd years ago and the sound of her voice trying to say the word “foxglove” when he pointed to a clump and told her they were his favourite wildflowers. He said, “Go back, the pair of you, and fetch the dogcart. I’ll stay here and watch. And you can tell Phoebe Fraser to break the news to Mrs. Swann. Don’t be longer than you can help, although you’ll have to go the long way round. That dog cart is too wide for the bridge.” And then, as they shuffled off, “One other thing, apart from telling Phoebe. Keep it to yourselves, you understand? If anyone asks, I’m still looking.”

They went off at a fast walk and he sat down on a drift log, his mind conjuring with the kind of questions a coroner would be likely to ask. He thought, savagely,
They’ll need priming, every one of ‘em, and there’s not much time before the tongues start to wag. George will be here by dusk, and George will see it my way. As for the others, they’ll damned well do as they’re told and say what I tell ‘em to say!
It was very quiet and still here at this hour of the day. A few birds rustled in the thicket about the dam, and the stream sang as it rippled round the breast of the islet. He thought of his father, who often came here to paint in watercolours, and wondered if the riverside scene would ever hold anything but dismal memories for any of them in the future.

Six

The Strategist

W
hen all three of them were present, quietly awaiting his pleasure, he had second thoughts about Hetty and said, addressing George, “I’ll fetch your mother. I don’t care whether she’s equal to it or not. She’ll have to know what we’re about,” and he clumped out into the hall before George, Denzil, or Robert could protest. Henrietta was in the sewing-room, hunched over the fire, an untasted cup of tea on the table beside her. He said, “You’d better join us, Hetty. There’s something you have to know, along with the others. It won’t take long. Then we’ll talk things over among ourselves. Just you, me, and George, for Denzil and Robert will want to get back and make their arrangements.”

She rose and followed him back into the drawing-room, taking a seat George offered her by the hearth and pulling her shawl close about her shoulders. George stood with his back to the fire. Denzil and Robert sat close together near the window as though poised to flee his silent wrath.

He said, clearing his throat, “There are things you have to know, and I don’t want a word of this mentioned outside this room. I’ll have my say and after that it’s up to you to pick holes in it. However, as I see it and with ordinary luck there shouldn’t be any trouble, for the fact is, fair means or foul, I mean to squeeze a clear verdict of accidental death out of that coroner and I can only do it with your backing. You don’t have to worry about that doctor. He’ll know precisely what’s in my mind and I think I can rely on him. First of all let me deal with that broken handrail on the bridge.”

Robert spoke up, a hint of truculence in his voice. “That rail wasn’t broken yesterday. I was over there several times during the day and I’d have noticed.”

“Noticed it was loose?”

“I didn’t look at it that closely.”

“Well, your man will bear me out. One end was swinging free.” He glared at them. “I made damn sure it was before I sent him to look at it.”

“You pushed it? Pushed it hard?”

“Hard enough to make a gap. And while we’re at it, you might as well know it was me who relit that straw beside the hen-house.”

He heard Denzil hiss. Robert was staring hard at the floor. There was silence in the room until George shuffled and Adam, swinging round on him, said, addressing him as though he was a child, “Don’t fidget! Get glasses and pour Denzil and Robert a stiff tot of whisky. I’ll take brandy, so will your mother. Help yourself if you care to join us.”

George did as he was ordered. The heavy silence continued, broken only by the chink of decanter on glasses. Robert took the drink gratefully, but he had to push the glass into his father’s hand. He said, at length, “I was working on that hen-house most of yesterday. I piled the rotten straw, but I don’t recall setting a match to it. I was going to, but I thought of mother and I left it.”

“I’m not asking you to say you lit it. You’d had fires there before by the look of the ground. Nobody is likely to press the point if you say there was a bonfire stacked from straw out of the roosts. I’ll say it was smouldering. On oath, if necessary.”

George said, hoarsely, “You’ll have to be more explicit, Gov’nor. Robert and I are getting your meaning, but I don’t think Denzil is, are you, Denzil?”

Denzil looked up as if seeing them for the first time. He took a gulp of his whisky and said, “She walked into the river. That footprint proved as much, didn’t it?”

“Not one of us is in a position to prove anything one way or the other. All I’m aiming to do is to stack the evidence in favour of an accident. If there’s reasonable assumption of that, seeing who we are, the coroner and jury will go our way. She’s your wife, Denzil, and your mother, Robert, but before that she was my daughter and I’m damned if I’ll have her branded as a suicide.” He paused momentarily, glaring round the circle. “I’ll say more. I’ll never forgive any one of you who mentions that shooting incident. If that comes out there’s no other verdict they could return, so bear it in mind, all three of you.”

“They aren’t likely to call George as a witness,” Robert said. “Why should they?”

“They might. On account of the big fire at Swann’s yard.”

“Great God, Mr. Swann,” Denzil burst out, “that was years ago! What’s your fire got to do with my Stella drowning herself in the river?”

“Who knows whether it had to do with it? Who knows whether she didn’t get started on this line long before that, the time of the Dewponds fire? Three fires, two of them fatal. Her father-in-law dead in one, her son in another. And in between half her father’s property goes up in flames. Wouldn’t that give a sick woman in shock a morbid fear of fire? Wouldn’t it give coroner and jury good grounds for thinking so? That’s all I need, and I mean to get it. You’d best be clear on that, all of you, for if necessary I’ll fight for it in open court.”

The force of his personality held them in thrall. They were silenced by his vehemence and again there was a long silence in the room as he glared at each of them in turn.

“Well? I’m asking for holes in the theory. If you see any, now is your chance to point them out before somebody else does.”

The whisky seemed to have steadied Robert. He said, setting down his glass, “Neither Charlie nor William noticed that loose handrail. It’s true they hadn’t crossed over today, but Charlie particularly was surprised and said as much. He was across there yesterday, carrying new planks and taking back the old ones I prised loose for him.”

“Would a man with his arms full of planks notice a thing like that?”

“No, but neither Charlie nor William will be called, will they?”

“Not if I can help it. I’ve already given a list of witnesses who could help to the constable, and their names weren’t on it. I’ll give evidence myself of finding her, and of seeing that rail and that smouldering bonfire. Denzil will have to tell them how he missed her and searched the farm buildings. No more than that so far as I can judge, save to bear out the doctor’s testimony.”

George said, “What will that testimony be?”

“That depends on him.”

“Not really. If you’ve dropped this number of hints you will have gone further, just that much further. You saw him when he certified death. What did you say to him?”

“What would you expect in the circumstances? I primed him, much as I’m priming you.”

“But it isn’t the same, Gov’nor. He’s not in the family.”

“In a way he is. In a way the coroner is, and the locals on the jury will be. Prejudiced in our favour that is, so where’s a conflict of evidence to come from? Only the collie that followed her down to the river knows what really happened.”

There was another pause. Then Denzil said, pleadingly, “Tell it your way, Mr. Swann. Tell it the way you want it told and talked about afterwards.”

“Is that necessary?”

“I have to hear it. Hearing it, maybe I can believe it. Now, and for the rest of my days.”

“Very well, Denzil.” The querulous note had gone from his voice. He sipped his brandy and set aside his glass, moving over until he was close enough to lay his hand on his son-in-law’s shoulder.

“Listen, my boy, and listen carefully. None of us know and none of us will ever know, but this is how it could have been. There’s no secret about how Stella felt as regards fire. I daresay it was how your mother felt until the day she died after watching your father die trying to save his cattle all those years ago. Or how I felt, watching my life work go out in smoke beside the Thames. Or how George feels, come to that, when he thinks on young Martin in that wretched trailer up in the Pennines. There’s nothing strange about that. It’s how any of us feel deep down about something that threatens anything near and dear to us. Besides, she was in the change of life. The doctor will testify to that. Under that kind of stress, multiplied a hundred times maybe by Martin’s death, fear of fire dominated her thoughts, night and day. That’s real enough, for it kept you and Robert and Dolly on the jump ever since the night George broke the news to you. But this time there was a fire of sorts, a glow from a dying bonfire across the river, and the river was running high. She went over to take a look and put too much weight on that rail. There’s a strong current midstream when the river is high. Strong enough to carry her two miles downstream. Why do we have to assume it was anything but an accident? If it didn’t happen that way, it happened some other way, brought about by factors we’ll never know. Not us nor anybody else. Finish your drink, Denzil, and go on home. Take two of those pills the doctor left for Stella. They didn’t help her, but I daresay they’ll ensure you a night’s rest.”

He went back to the fireplace and picked up his glass. When nobody moved he went on, “There’s only one thing more I’d like to say, and doubtless Hetty will join me in saying it. It has nothing to do with today’s wretched business, or the misery you’ve had to face in the last few weeks. It counts for much more than that, son, and as I say, it comes from all of us here, but especially from me and her mother. You’ve been a good husband to her from the beginning. All this time, ever since you helped her through that other piece of foolishness, Stella has had a good life and a full one. Try and bear that in mind. It doesn’t come everybody’s way and the fact that it came hers, after such a bad start, was your doing. No one else’s, just yours, do you hear?”

They went out then and George walked with them into the yard where their trap was waiting, lamps glowing in the light swirl of mist closing down from the spur above. He watched Robert help his father into the passenger seat and climb up himself, gathering the reins. Then, after the little rig had clattered through the arch and passed round the rhododendron clump at the head of the drive, he walked slowly back, hands deep in his pockets. The Gov’nor had given them their rations, plenty enough to get on with for the time being. But he had a queer certainty that his own were still awaiting him inside the house.

* * *

They were much as he had left them, his mother seated by the fire draped in her shawl, her face puffed under the eyes, her cheeks flushed by the brandy he had forced on her. But he noticed that the old man held himself poker-straight and thought, meeting his steady glance, By God, but he’s a hard man to follow
! How can any of us feel a gaffer so long as he’s around? Adam said, with the meres
t trace of anxiety in his voice, “They won’t let us down, will they?” and he said no, they wouldn’t. Robert had got the message and would rehearse his father carefully in what to say and what not to say in the witness box. Adam said, “Right, then, now I can move on to you and your mother. Not about what’s said in public, or gossiped around concerning your sister, but about things in general. It’s time somebody spoke up and as long as I’m around I’ll not shirk the job, not even tonight. Help yourself to another drink if you want one.”

“I don’t need another drink, Gov’nor.”

“Well then, sit, for this will take time,” and George sat. “It’s about drift. Drift and muddle and woolly-mindedness generally. I’ve held my tongue until now, hoping one or other of you would take the initiative, but you haven’t. Not you, nor Edward, nor Alex, who must have noticed what was happening to us since we ran into this string of setbacks. I don’t count Giles. He has enough on his plate without worrying overmuch about us. You were ready to push on with that articulated trailer and I’ve not heard a word about it since young Martin was killed on the prototype. Have you shelved it?”

“Not shelved, exactly. We halted production on the other two.”

“Was that a Board decision or yours?”

“It was mine.”

“Then it underlines everything I’ve been thinking. Tell me something else. That new vehicle was going to put the old firm back on its feet, wasn’t it?”

“It would have done that.”

“How? In a few words, that your mother can understand.”

“Well, articulated vehicles can operate where we’re meeting our stiffest competition, in congested towns designed for horse traffic, for it’s there that one-man operators are hauling our goods in driblets. Apart from that, a trailer would more than double the weight of haul per vehicle. Only that way could we check the drift of big firms to organise their own haulage fleets. We could deliver faster and far cheaper.”

“It’s much as I thought. But after Martin was killed you didn’t push on?”

“No.”

“I’ve never heard such damned nonsense! That isn’t what I’d look for in a son of mine.” His disgust created in him a need for further stimulation. He went over to the decanter and poured himself another brandy. “See here, it all adds up to what I feared. You’re all losing your nerve and looking over your shoulders, and it won’t do, d’ye hear? Why should we expect nothing but fair winds? The best of us run into squalls from time to time, but that’s no damned reason for putting back into port, like a lot of frightened amateurs. We’re
not
amateurs! We’re the toughest and most experienced professionals in the game, and I thought I’d lived long enough to establish that beyond doubt. Do you think I never had self-doubts? I did, time and again, but I never let ‘em make a nincompoop out of me. What’s scared us so badly? Lay it out for yourself, clause by clause. Edward’s flighty wife makes a fool of him, so he takes to the bottle and let’s his region go to the devil. Oh, I know he’s over it now, but my information is he still spends too much time in pubs instead of casting round for a wench to give him something better to think of in his off-duty hours. Clause two: your sister-in-law gets herself killed in a street fracas, but that’s her business, not yours, and certainly not Swann’s, as a firm earning its bread and salt in the open market. Clause three: we have a big drop in profits and you hit on a way to turn the tide, but the first sign of danger and difficulty you run for cover and keep your head down, hoping the trouble will go away of its own accord. That boy Martin was a casualty, but you can’t expect to come through everything, every hazard, unscathed, the way you did when you stole a march over everyone by mechanisation. It ought not to have led us here, sitting round like a lot of undertaker’s mutes, feeling so damned sorry for ourselves that instead of fighting back we cry into our beer. With common sense, and a bold front, it could have been avoided. On your part and Denzil’s. On Giles’s and Deborah’s, too, if either of ‘em had had the damned sense to come to me and give me the facts.”